How to Export Your Desktop Settings in Linux

Linux desktop comes with plenty of customization options, and that is a good thing as it allows us to customize our desktop for better productivity. However, these customizations can make it difficult for us to move to a new system. Here, we show you two quick and simple ways to export your desktop settings to a new Linux machine.

Migrate Your Desktop Settings using SaveDesktop

The easiest way to export your existing desktop settings to a new Linux system is by using the SaveDesktop utility. This program has a GUI for you to select the DE settings you want to save, and it can save your DE’s settings, shell extensions, and even your Flatpak packages. It achieves this by creating a portable archive that contains all your customizations, which you can import to a new computer.

The desktop environments that it supports include:

• GNOME
• Xfce
• Cinnamon
• Budgie
• COSMIC (Rust and GNOME version)
• Pantheon
• MATE
• KDE Plasma
• Deepin

and the things it saves include:

• your icons, fonts, and themes
• your settings
• your backgrounds (including dynamic wallpapers, provided that the same username is retained)
• your installed Flatpak apps and their data
• your Desktop folder in the home directory
• other items related to your desktop environment (e.g., Cinnamon extensions and applets, KDE Plasma widgets, GNOME and Nautilus extensions, etc.)

To get started, first make sure that you have the Flatpak package manager running on your system.

Enable the Flathub repository by running the following command:

sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Note: For Fedora, you can connect your Flatpak install to Flathub by opening the Software app, pressing Ctrl + ., then clicking the “Fedora Flatpaks” toggle switch.

Restart your machine to apply your new settings, then install the SaveDesktop utility once it’s back up:

sudo flatpak install flathub io.github.vikdevelop.SaveDesktop

Start SaveDesktop by running the following command:

flatpak run io.github.vikdevelop.SaveDesktop

Provide a name for your desktop backup, then click the Items to include in the configuration archive menu entry.

Select the parts of your desktop that you want to export to your new machine.

Open the More options category, then select the arrow beside the Periodic Saving entry.

Set a reasonable backup interval for your desktop config. In my case, I set it to “daily” so that I always have the latest backup of my desktop.

Click Apply to set your new config, then click Save to create the export file.

Click the Open the folder button and check if your file is in its target directory, to make sure the export is successful.

On a side note: are you looking for better tools for your KDE desktop? Look at some great system administration tools for Plasma today.

Importing Your Desktop Settings using SaveDesktop

With your export config ready, you can now copy your entire desktop settings to a new Linux machine. You can do this by transferring the backup through a flash disk or by sending it over the network using scp.

Once you have the backup file on your target system, make sure that it also has both Flatpak and SaveDesktop.

Open the SaveDesktop app on your target machine, then click the Import button on the program’s top bar.

Click the Import from file button, then navigate to and select your backup archive using the program’s file picker window.

This will automatically load your backup config to your target computer. Click the Log Out button to for the import to take effect.

Another unique features of SaveDesktop is its ability to synchronize your desktop’s settings across multiple systems. This is useful if you’re working between different computers and want to maintain the same environment across all of them.

Note: Using the synchronize function in SaveDesktop requires your machines to either be publicly discoverable or in the same local network.

Migrate Your KDE Desktop Settings using Konsave

Konsave is a CLI-based program that can create exportable backups of your DE setup. Unlike SaveDesktop, Konsave is both minimalist and highly flexible, making it useful for creating custom backup templates for both DEs and window managers. Konsave officially supports KDE Plasma, but it can be used on all other desktop environments too!

To start, install both the Python 3 runtime and the pipx package manager. In Debian and Ubuntu, you can install both packages from the default repositories using apt:

sudo apt install python3 pipx

In Fedora, they’re also available from the distro’s default repos through dnf:

sudo dnf install python3 pipx

For Arch Linux, you can use pacman to fetch both Python 3 and pipx:

sudo pacman -S python python-pipx

Download and install the Konsave binary using the pipx package manager:

pipx install konsave
pipx inject konsave setuptools

Make sure that your “.local/bin” directory is in your current user’s PATH variable:

echo "PATH=$PATH:.local/bin" >> ~/.bashrc && bash

Good to know: learn what makes a great DE tick by looking at our comparison article between KDE Plasma and GNOME.

Using Konsave to Export and Import Desktop Settings

With Konsave up and running, you can now generate the export template for your desktop. To do that, run the program without any arguments:

konsave

Save your current KDE desktop setup inside Konsave:

konsave -s my-kde-desktop

Confirm that Konsave has properly saved your desktop config by listing all the available backups in the program:

konsave -l

Generate an exportable copy of your Konsave backup. This will create a .knsv file that contains your desktop configs on the current working directory:

konsave -e my-kde-desktop

Transfer the .knsv file to your target machine, then run the following command to import it to your new computer’s Konsave instance:

konsave -i ./my-kde-desktop.knsv

Make sure that you’ve properly imported the Konsave backup, then load it to your target machine:

konsave -l
konsave -a my-kde-desktop

Apply your new settings by logging out, then logging back in to your desktop.

Using the two tools above, you will be able to migrate the settings of your Linux desktop across machines. Meanwhile, you should also check out some of the best desktop environments in 2024 that you can try out today.

Image credit: Freestocks via Unsplash. All alterations and screenshots by Ramces Red.

Ramces Red - Staff Writer

Ramces is a technology writer that lived with computers all his life. A prolific reader and a student of Anthropology, he is an eccentric character that writes articles about Linux and anything *nix.